....From The Tree Of......................The Ranting Critic
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_______________________________________________________ Jumping Fences or- On Seeing Brilliant Work Dumped Like So Much Garbage Green gray half-light hills desolate moonscape strafed with sheep -an unfocused lighter gray, graze below two men who sit and smoke, look down, thoughts lost in flock. "Tell me, Seamus, why di'ye think that Tasha spooked the sheep? Broke the pens and let them run amok once the livestock show was over? Clumped and jumping over they were- up against each other; ruined the look of prize won stock you ask me." Seamus took a long pull on his pipe, peered out through eyes lapis lazul and answered: "I dinna think she minded sheep or hated the shepherd, Paddy. I think b'nee the laughing and pretending nothing matters, Tasha is, and always has been a stone cold bitch. Comes down to this: they weren't her sheep." Paddy heard the words and nodded once; drew on his pipe, sat beside his friend and felt a curtain tear. Another pub to avoid, more green gray empty hills and nights of knowing why it is they sat so much alone. "Ever notice the way the stock she has says, 'Tasha's this' and 'Tasha's that'?" He looked at orderly, dotted pockets of mindful sheep below, thought of the crowding after the broken rails, sheep squeezed and mounting one another -chaos. "Culda fixed them rails. Given them back to order. She did it with a meanness unprovoked; she culda won, you hadn't shifted flocks, you know." "I know", said Seamus, grinned through teeth that picked up the cleanness of the moon, watched a ewe give birth to another lamb and he was happy. From The Entertainment Section Imagine not knowing that a poem praised so lavishly and nominated to boot, would be not known when posted elsewhere just because the poet changed his name to 'cooter' , he's suddenly 'are you male or female?' Please--surprise me next time. This shit is gettin almost as old as the poem -but then some people, when they're smitten just can't be embarrassed: they've lost capacity for it. I think it's something sadly known as desperate- and so public this time- it's all we seem to talk about, ought to change his name more aptly to 'the entertainer'. I can tell you this: I know I enjoy the show, so I guess this is a thank you ...lol Voice Of The Turtle I see too much of this: to be a poet/writer past tense peacenik, to be spoiled with the many years of easy pacifist OM, is to bury one's head in a sandbox, pass the joint and wail the world is too testosteronic, 'Daddy big-dicked' frickin dangerous. Forget Ezra. T.E. Lawrence, Gallic Wars and veni, vidi, vici. Never let the blood be anything but wine; we'll all be fine eating from the hands of monsters, just before they skin the youngest but they ably pen : "See how pretty red the flow runs, how they eel-like, writhe." Feeling Attila Thundering across the solid sod as swords make love to mind, beat righteousness from wind, why can't we now, in this fast turn of a millenium bring our barbarian bones to life and trample what has crawled from caves to kill us? Keening, hair on end- the rabid, rictus teeth and eyes like opal struck by moon... Two-Way Dick Tracy or 'Look Into The Camera, Jane -The Red Light's On' On Friday morning in Pittsburgh there were three, suspicious occurances that involved Middle-Eastern looking gentlemen parked outside of fire deparments. It was, as they say, all over the news. Headlines thoughout the day till the final report at eleven, after a long ten minutes of commercials at which time we learned the incidents involved people who were asking for directions, swarthy types, idling at a routine traffic stop and the third was not Middle Eastern at all, but a Mexican who's car had broken down. Luckily, no fire was exchanged, friendly or otherwise and let me tell you despite the fact it was a bust, this citizenry peering through Venetian blinds, curlers picking up those signals from Venus is plenty sharp. Ode To A Commode O coldest throne, on whom my most exposed flesh sits, whom I trust will take the shit I toss to thee, I trust as well thou canst not throw it back at me. Or if thou, in some fit of pique, do hurl contagion at my feet, I'll plunge thee to thy blackest caw, pour caustic agent down thy maw, O most rebellious and most fickle seat. Jihad- (or Sex and Death) Ask the man in the street about "Gee-had? Can't say why it is so many young men wanna die for seventy-some pussies off in the sky- why not just ask Jenny Lou out? Hell, my pecker alone coulda slain an army till I found sin." And he grins in that wise and peaceable kingdom where the infidel sleeps well- minus a lethal load. Hardly Gandhi I'm not a Hindu. I don't believe I've been a fruit fly or a cat one lifetime ago -or that someone's uncle came back slithering through grass, or auntie climbed a tree to hang there by her possum tail or with folded wings, just hung there as a bat. In fact, this reverence, sheer reverence for all things living I contend is a crock of shit. For instance, just today while sitting at my computer some horrible jump of lint or fault line in my vision seen just left of screen jumped yet again and damned if it wasn't a jumping spider- nasty, scary little fuck who's luck it was to have a Catholic used to smiting evil, spy his arachnian ass So before he sank his fangs--and no matter how small they are, they all have fangs--into my wrist or pinkie, I dispatched him forthwith. Piece of bluelined paper did just fine for a tiny squish--all gone--no damn remorse at all; I figure, some things come down to them or me. Live and let live I say, but far away when it comes to creepycrawlers. Ain't no grain of sand I'm contemplating now, it's flat out murder of the vermin, and if they have feelings too, well then rest assured: those leggy fucks won't have them long. Ill-Advised Art I suppose you could launch a big old, bulky hulk of geriatric, call it a yacht if what you've got for a flag is a bright red screaming sheet of painted femme fatale --maybe no one will notice the flag is suited for a speedboat, not a thing for Huck and Jim- but I wouldn't recommend it, lest you like the snickers or you're deaf and blind as well, in which case, nothing matters much save being in the race. For some, that's everything, and some are just too dumb to know the difference, long as it floats; that's how it is in a democracy, we're free to be as big a jackass as we please: yell the first debunker down. They'll come around and fall for poignancy instead of what it is: clear ly unsuitable, but most can be beaten down to believing it 'avant garde'--ain't that always the way with art? It can be played with, humbugging some to think that 'long' is seriously stellar stuff--or even new--and that's about as true as thinking that to write of cutting arms shows any understanding whatsoever; no, not once in all the times that it's been pulled, tired and worn out of that bottom drawer, whether for attention or for suicide, or psychosexual blood lust or to show you really know the workings of a young, messed female mind- but I think it's only that some sick fucks will think it's sexy it gets air time---or the Barbie stuff -well sheesh---Denise Duhamel did that years ago. Come Hither Maybe Poetry about forests and legend and folklore, I can easily live without and if I never read another bower-y line, I'd be quite happy: someone who's throwing her braids from a tower whose head swims with mermen, mythological creatures of every stripe and kind in poems that beckon and beckon and beckon with rarely a reckoning ever are scents spritzered out: handkerchiefs dropped. An ankle that's glimpsed through the leaves, leaves me cold. Say it, don't paint pretty pictures. Our lives are not Hanzel and Gretel, my dear, and both of us know it's not the woods or Goldilocks but her splayed cunt inside the hut within the woods or Dream Cage has the huntsman looking; perhaps too many for one Goldie, and those are longshot odds. But see now, there's a Penny for your thoughts. Try not to spend it in one place. There's plenty of forest to hide in; you might keep ahead of de lone(l) y ness and its awkward three-way just in time to name another table with your penknife. God g'wi ye: I seem to remember something about "I will not let thee go, except thou bless me." On To Page 10 .............. Return To Contents This site sponsered by 
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